


When You Save Me (I’ve Got Nothin' Left To Sigh For)

by luninosity



Series: Feeling Strangely Fine [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Versus The Hulk, Bucky's Awesome, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Except Not Really Versus, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Injuries, Mission Fic, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Steve Rogers, True Love, mutual understanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 04:06:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2567624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Above, the crumpling skyscraper quivers and groans like a dying man. Bucky, over the radio, says with perfect equanimity, “About sixty of the lizard-things comin’ up the stairs, Steve, no one’s told ’em <i>anything</i> about extra weight in a collapsing building, gonna have to jump—”</p>
            </blockquote>





	When You Save Me (I’ve Got Nothin' Left To Sigh For)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LifeLover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LifeLover/gifts).



> Birthday fic for a friend! The original prompt was rather more detailed and had Tony/Bruce as a side pairing, which I...well, honestly, I head-canon them as more Science Bros, but I've tried to write them sort of ambivalently here, so you can read it either way. I think the fundamental elements of Bucky, the Hulk, battles with bad things happening, and hurt/comfort are still there, at least!
> 
> As ever, characters belong to Marvel, not me; no disrespect intended! 
> 
> Title from Semisonic’s “Delicious”: _you’re delicious/ when you save me…_
> 
> For the record, Semisonic's "I'll Feel For You" is SUCH a Steve/Bucky song, it hurts. Series title is also a Semisonic album title, because I am a nineties kid.

It’s a bad scene.  
  
Steve’s in the thick of the action, trying to be fifty places at once: pulling scared schoolkids out of an overturned bus, blocking debris as it rattles down from the Hollywood sign, throwing the shield in a desperate bid to knock out one of the baby Abominations that’re rampaging across the glorious sunny environs of Los Angeles. Baby Abominations. Who’d thought that was a good idea?  
  
He ducks a flying car, throws a girl toward the arms of a tall capable woman who’d come in with Phil Coulson, and shouts, “Hulk!”  
  
Doctor Banner, currently large and green and growling, bashes two Abomination-ettes together, drops them, and spins his way.  
  
“Keep them off Bucky!”  
  
Bucky, from his embattled cracked-foundation rooftop, yells, “I’m fine, Steve!” across everyone’s earpieces and then picks two HYDRA foot-soldiers off of Steve’s left flank.  
  
HYDRA. That’s who’d thought the baby Abominations were a good idea. Because insane Nazi world-dominating organizations _would_ jump right on the concept of cloning miniature indestructible monstrosities to wipe out the weak.  
  
Steve dodges a shot from a crackling blue energy weapon. Bucky’s building teeters. Steve’d thought he’d be safe up there. Out of the way.  
  
“Stark—”  
  
“Little busy here, Cap—” Tony’s playing tag with heat-seeking missiles. HYDRA seriously has it in for Hollywood. Steve’s not real sure why, other than maybe good artistic taste, but why can wait, why is important but not now—  
  
He smacks the closest Abomination-lite until it plops down at his feet. His arm’s aching, exhausted. How many’d that been? Eighty? His cheek burns from a stray claw-nick.  
  
Above, the crumpling skyscraper quivers and groans like a dying man. Bucky, over the radio, says with perfect equanimity, “About sixty of the lizard-things comin’ up the stairs, Steve, no one’s told ’em _anything_ about extra weight in a collapsing building, gonna have to jump—”  
  
“You’re thirty floors up!”  
  
“Yeah, says you, no-parachute Steve, I’ve heard those stories, you and I are gonna _talk_ —”  
  
Steve can see him now, having abandoned the sniper’s post to get upright and size up the jump. Steve’s heart shudders through the dusty sunlight.  
  
Bucky’s more or less okay. These days. Most days. Better.  
  
Bucky doesn’t heal as fast as Steve does. Faster than human standard. Not immediate.  
  
Bucky’s got a ton of Winter Soldier muscle memory, how to jump and fall and land, how to fight and kill and never miss a shot. Bucky, when those memories kick in, sometimes has flashbacks. Wakes screaming in the night, or worse, not screaming, mute as a corpse.  
  
Bucky backs up, runs, launches himself off the roof two seconds before the mini-Abomination horde swarms through the access door. Before Steve can take more than a step.  
  
He watches Bucky fall, a tiny black dot in space, and then gets punched in the small of the back by an angry baby dinosaur-lizard. Steve, not at all in the mood, throws it across the street by its tail.  
  
He’s lost sight of Bucky. He runs.  
  
There’s a lot of dust, building-ruins and cracked asphalt and that merciless sunshine. And an army between him and Bucky. He takes them all on.  
  
A few stray shots knock some HYDRA henchmen out of his way. Low shots. Originating someplace close to the ground. Can Bucky not get up?  
  
The Hulk gets there before Steve does, snarling with rage, smacking bodies into the middle distance. Steve calls, “Doctor Banner!” and gets no response. Lots of green muscle between his vision and wherever Bucky’s landed.  
  
A cough. Over the radio. A voice. Bucky, back on. “It’s okay— ’m okay, I’m fine—” followed by a few muttered expletives in various languages, primarily Russian. “Okay, _mostly_ fine— _Steve look out!_ ”  
  
Steve dives forward. The H from the Hollywood sign crashes down inches from his feet.  
  
That’s not the worst. The worst is the Y bouncing off the Hulk’s head.  
  
The Hulk stops. Looks briefly puzzled. Then seems to decide that this is the last straw, the final hideous indignity. And roars.  
  
The whole battle abruptly shifts from _fuck these ludicrous baby clone-monsters_ to _fuck we’re actually in trouble_. Everyone’s attention swinging to their spot. The trouble spot.  
  
The Hulk roars again. Swings his head, searching, scenting the air.  
  
Natasha and Clint come skidding in from someplace else in the war zone, breathing hard, both bleeding. Steve waves them back; Natasha looks as if she wants to argue, but she’s human and she knows it. She and Clint get down behind some parked cars and try to talk to Bruce. Their voices echo in the distance, reminders of humanity.  
  
Tony, above, offers, “I can run home and get this special suit, it’s a thing I’ve been working on, and when I say working on I mean with him, which means he knows as much about it as I do, so—”  
  
“Go,” Steve says. “If you think it’ll help. If not, get down here and form up.”  
  
“We could really use some backup, not that I don’t love the guy, I do, but—”  
  
“We’re _it_ , Tony.” They are. Thor’s…somewhere, most likely Asgard, definitely not on Earth. Sam’s handling rescue operations; can’t be spared, not if they want to save lives. Coulson’s people’re ninety percent human also and are better out of this one.  
  
Steve takes a step forward. The last remaining Abominationlets take one look at the big green nasty in their midst and scamper. More sense than the rest of them.  
  
Bucky’s down there somewhere. Lying at the feet of the Hulk. _Mostly_ okay.  
  
“Doctor Banner,” Steve says. The HYDRA operatives’re likely cheering—the Hulk’s come out to help break the world—but they won’t be cheering for long if this goes badly. Nobody on the planet will be. “Stand down. We’ve got this under control.”  
  
The Hulk looks his way. And grins. Slow.  
  
Steve’s not scared of much, never has been. But that might be a little knee-weakening. Just a hair.  
  
“Tony’s here,” Steve tries. “We’re gonna handle this, okay? We’re here, and Tony’s right here.”  
  
“That’s exactly right! We can handle lots of things! Tony’s here!” Tony lands—dented and breathless—and catches himself on Steve’s shoulder as he stumbles.  
  
This is a bad move. The Hulk growls.  
  
“Hey,” Tony says. “Come on, it’s fine, look, not touching him anymore, I’m fine—”  
  
The Hulk shifts weight. A car alarm goes off.  
  
“Hey,” says another voice.  
  
Bucky. From the ground.  
  
“I know you’re angry,” Bucky goes on. Short sentences. Breaths between. Ribs, Steve thinks. Broken or fractured. He can’t see anything. Can’t see Bucky. Even when he eases a step to the left, only a glimpse of sunshine and black combat boots and reflective metal.  
  
“You said you were angry all the time,” Bucky says. “You said that to me. _For_ me. Maybe I didn’t say thanks then. Think I said yeah. Walked away.”  
  
The Hulk huffs out a breath. Hunkers down, closer to the ground. To Bucky. Tony starts forward; Steve grabs his arm, but then can’t resist a careful step ahead with him.  
  
“You live with it,” Bucky says from the crumpled-building debris, through the fractured ribs and whatever else’s knitting itself back together inside his body. “Being the other guy. Wantin’ to smash holes in the world some days. I get it. I do, I swear, you know I do.”  
  
Steve can sense Tony’s glance his way without bothering to glance back. He’s personally gone cold under the vivid sunlight. Bucky doesn’t talk about this. Bucky barely _talks_. Even to Steve.  
  
“We won,” Bucky says, and stops to cough. This time his voice sounds weaker. “This’s me tellin’ you. We’re okay. Save it. Use it later. You know I know, and right now, trust me, got it?”  
  
The Hulk kneels down with strange delicacy. One big hand nudges something in the rubble. Black-clad and bloody.  
  
Steve’s cheeks’re wet. Tears. Behind them, SHIELD remnants’re popping up like immortal gophers, embarking on containment and reconstruction.  
  
Bucky sits up, the Hulk’s hand behind his back. He’s white-faced and breathing shallowly—definitely ribs, then—but his eyes find Steve’s across the battle-dust, and that’s a crooked smile.  
  
Someone else sits up. One of the half-dead HYDRA goons. Up and firing.  
  
The energy-beam sizzles past Steve and skitters off Bucky’s arm, the metal shoulder, and Bucky whirls that way and a thin metallic sliver’s quivering in the HYDRA guy’s throat—  
  
Steve thinks maybe they’re going to be okay, Bucky’s not hurt, no one got shot, those ribs’re no doubt protesting but—  
  
The Hulk growls again, not uncontrolled rage—the words landed, before—but almost like grief. Bucky’s gone even whiter. Fingertips touching his shoulder. Not shaking, but very slow. Disbelieving motion.  
  
Steve throws himself that direction. Bucky’s trembling in earnest by the time he arrives, even though they’d been only a few feet apart.  
  
“Steve—”  
  
“How bad? Can I see?” On his right, the Hulk’s shuddering and shrinking, dwindling back towards being Doctor Banner; Tony’s beside him, talking urgently in a low voice. Steve reserves a fraction of attention for that situation. Focuses the rest, and his heart, on Bucky. “What did it do?”  
  
“It—I’m not—not hurt, but—Steve—” Bucky’s voice is stuttering. Coming apart.  
  
Steve reaches over and gingerly coaxes Bucky’s flesh-and-blood hand off the metal shoulder. And his breath whooshes out. Oh. _Oh_.  
  
The energy weapon took off the paint. On the surface, and it shouldn’t even matter, except for how it does matter, devastatingly so.  
  
That painted shape used to be a star, on the original arm. This new model, once Bucky’d asked for the upgrade—once Steve’d realized belatedly how much the old one hurt, and let the suggestion of possibility linger in a late-night conversation—had had, in place of the telling red points, a shining copy of Captain America’s shield.  
  
Steve’d not known about that one beforehand. Bucky’d worked it out with Tony. Tony’d announced, laughing, upon the first unveiling, “Property of Captain America!” Steve had looked at Bucky; Bucky’d shrugged and said, “Well, yeah,” with an expression of _thought you’d all have figured that by now_. Steve had laughed, heart fluttering and light for the first time since the ice, and kissed him.  
  
The painted shield’s ruined. Scorched and scalded away. Such a tiny thing, to be the end of the world.  
  
“It’s okay,” Steve says, “it’s okay, I’m here, I’ve got you—”  
  
“It’s not here.” Bucky’s eyes’re huge. Not quite dissociation, not quite a flashback, but wavering on the brink of confusion and disorienting loss. “Steve, I—if it’s not here then I’m not—”  
  
“You’re still mine!” Half a terrified joke, that phrasing; half a memory of that moment, property of Captain America, in case it’ll throw out a lifeline. Half serious: Bucky’s his and he’s Bucky’s, no matter what.  
  
That’s too many halves, but that’s just fine. That’s him and Bucky: always more, together.  
  
“I can’t _see_ it.” Bucky’s bleeding still, dull rusty spots down one side of his combat gear. Drying, healing, but sluggish. Steve presses big hands over the worst leak. Bucky whispers, “If I’m not yours, am I theirs again, I don’t want to be, please—”  
  
“ _No_.” He frees one hand. Touches Bucky’s cheek. Most vital mission of his life, saving Bucky, the way that Bucky’ll proclaim the most important mission of _his_ life’s forever been saving Steve. “No. Look at me. _Just_ at me. Don’t look at it. Just me. You’re here and I’m here and you’re here with me.”  
  
“I can’t breathe,” Bucky says, which is more psychosomatic than otherwise at this point, Steve can feel his bones popping back into place, but that hurts too, he knows. At least Bucky’s talking. Aware enough to tell him that this feels wrong.  
  
They’ve been through worse. Not lately, but they’ve made it out every time so far.  
  
He says, “You can if I can, Buck,” and finds Bucky’s right hand and sets it on his own chest. “With me, okay? In and out. In. Out. Good, you’re doin’ great, keep going.”  
  
Bucky’s fingers curl in. Taut.  
  
“You’re okay,” Steve whispers. He doesn’t know whether the shattered-glass memories behind those eyes can hear him. He hopes so. There’s Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier and a laughing long-legged boy clutching science-fiction magazines and a sergeant shouting encouragement to his men through machine-gun fire, and sometimes one of them listens, and sometimes they all do. Sometimes none of them can.  
  
“I love you,” he says. All of you. Every last piece. Everything you are and have been and try to be, the way you get up and keep trying and then yell at _me_ for being the stupid reckless one. I love you.  
  
Bucky, shaking like the death of continents, finds a nod, but can’t reply. The sunshine splashes honey over concrete and glass around them.  
  
Steve, thinking fast, holds up a hand. Hovers it over Bucky’s shoulder. “You trust me, right?”  
  
Bucky, now with a suggestion of offended loyalty peeking out from the catastrophe, nods again.  
  
“Okay. Can I touch you?”  
  
One more nod, so Steve does, very precisely tracing a shape over newly scratched metal plates and joins. The metal’s sunwarmed and welcoming. He draws circles with a fingertip, concentric and invisible, and a star in the center.  
  
Bucky looks at his shoulder. Steve puts eyebrows up, and waits.  
  
Bucky breathes out, almost inaudible. The words tangle in the sunlight: “…maybe. I—maybe.”  
  
“You know you can see it,” Steve says, “best invisible paint there is, come on, don’t tell me maybe, you’re just messin’ with me, aren’t you,” and Bucky gulps back a single sob and manages a grin and an, “I don’t know, Stevie, might be kinda lopsided…”  
  
“Jerk,” Steve says, somewhat muffled because Bucky’s fallen into his arms and he’s talking into hair. “Remind me to drag you to a modern art exhibit next week.”  
  
“Love you,” Bucky says, face tucked into Steve’s neck, breathing just about back to normal. “Only if you’re my date for the Stark Expo, week after that.”  
  
“Ah, come on, you don’t want to help inflate his ego, just because he invited us—” He’s rubbing Bucky’s back, now. Of course yes. Always yes. Tony needs friends more than will ever be admitted aloud, and Bucky wants to go, and so: yes. “Sure, though. You and the flying cars. Kinda jealous.”  
  
“Still yours,” Bucky promises, shaken and true as daylight. “Flyin’ cars ain’t real yet.”  
  
“We’ll get one when they are.”  
  
“Someone said my name,” Tony says, appearing behind them. “I heard my name.”  
  
“You owe us flying cars,” Steve tells him. “The future’s letting us down. Doctor Banner, how’re you feeling?”  
  
“Surprisingly not as full of regret about property damage as usual…” Bruce looks at Bucky. “Not as much damage in general. Thank you.” They all know he doesn’t mean property, with that second one.  
  
Bucky nods, evidently having exhausted his supply of words for now. Bruce grins, lopsided and bruised. Tony inquires brightly, “Anyone up for Mexican food? There’s a great little super-authentic place up the coast, around Ventura, probably not infested with tiny dinosaurs or enemy cyborgs, at least not that I know of, so we might get an hour off.”  
  
Steve touches lips to the top of Bucky’s head, breathing him in, alive and safe in the Southern California sunbeams, a hint of sea-breeze blowing clear salt-tinged air over skin.  
  
Bucky looks up from his safe haven inside Steve’s arms, not moving otherwise, apparently just comfortable there; and is the first one of them to say, “Sure.”


End file.
